


Unfathomable

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Fantasy, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Interspecies Romance, M/M, Mermaids, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: If our love were true, would it disappear like sea foam?





	Unfathomable

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by _The Little Mermaid_ and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

As the early summer sun sank towards the divide between the sea and the sky, it spread the colors of twilight across the waves and the clouds: the soft purple of the coral reefs, the yellow of a fresh pearl, the pastel pink of the inside of a conch shell.

 

It was rare that the merfolk gathered at the water’s surface in such great number, usually sticking to smaller pods, but royal weddings were a special occasion and it seemed that everyone from the entire expanse of the ocean had gathered in celebration of the rare event, decked out in their festive regalia. They wore fine necklaces made of polished seashells and shark teeth and wore cover-ups made of delicately woven kelp and pieces of driftwood.

 

Xiaojun wasn’t particularly fond of crowds like this. The tips of his fins and the coral that grew across his back and shoulders had always been overly sensitive to changes in the ocean’s current, so even during a joyous time like this, he stuck to the fringes. His whole body vibrated with the thrum of passing merfolk and the waves and ripples their tails kicked up. Xiaojun kept his head partially submerged beneath the salty waves to keep his gills on his neck wet. He was too distracted by his own thoughts to notice exactly _when_ the joyful music started, but now he was viscerally aware that the school of mermaids around him were all swept away in the joy of song and dance, the band playing tunes with their instruments carved from whale bone.

 

That’s when he noticed it. Off to the side.

 

There was a dark shape cutting through the water, heading straight for him. A gray-blue leathery fin formed the ferocious shape of a triangle and Xiaojun nearly tensed in fright before a head of coppery hair burst out of the water in front of him and a pair of scaly arms were wrapped around his neck in greeting.

 

“Xiaojun! There you are. I can never seem to find you these days.”

 

“If it isn’t the man of the evening himself,” Xiaojun called out, briefly returning the hug. “It’s about time you tied the knot.”

 

Renjun pulled back and smiled hard enough to flash both rows of his sharp, jagged teeth. “Why do you say it like that? Are you jealous?”

 

“Not in the slightest,” Xiaojun replied honestly.

 

As it was his wedding night, Renjun looked his absolute best. Around his throat was some kind of human creation that had been claimed by the ocean’s current. It glittered like gold, smelled of metal and chunks of reddish-orange gemstones dangled from it. Around his wrists were similar human-made adornments, jewels of all colors sparkling in the last light of the setting sun. “Oh come on, dear friend,” Renjun whined, “Humor me. I want you to be jealous. It’s not every day that someone like me gets chosen by a _prince_.” He smiled again.

 

Xiaojun sighed. “Fine. I’m jealous.” And perhaps, deep down, he was.

 

Although the two were relatively similar in age, as far as merpeople were concerned, the gap between their accomplishments was astounding. Despite his kind face, Renjun was a ferocious warrior and he had the scars across his scales and the jagged missing chunks of fin and flesh to prove it. He had gone on - and more importantly, come back from - hundreds of hunts, always dragging the carcass of a shark or squid behind him, the water around him smelling sour with fresh blood.

 

Xiaojun, unfortunately, lacked such hunting skills and didn’t even have much of a mind for studying or crafting. His only talent, or so he believed, was singing.

 

“Really, I’m jealous,” Xiaojun continued, not particularly emphatic. “Who wouldn’t want to be chosen by a prince?” He thought about Prince Sicheng. “He’s… beautiful.”

 

He was. In a way. If ferocity and ferociousness was a measure of beauty.

 

Renjun gave Xiaojun’s shoulder a pat. “I promise I won’t forget my good childhood friend when I move into the palace and have to wear a crown all day.”

 

Great. “How reassuring,” Xiaojun muttered. He looked away from Renjun, taking in the sight of the celebrations. Even through the thick crowd, he could spot Prince Sicheng lounging on a spear of volcanic rock protruding out of the waves. His scales were as shiny and dark as sealskin and his wiry muscles were decorated with battle scars, golden human accessories and the black tattoo-like markings that designated him as royalty. On top of his dark, curly hair was a towering crown of tortoiseshell and coral and scavenged glass. He wasn't the first in line to inherit the throne by any means, as full of vitality as his father had been when it came to child-rearing, but a prince was still a prince. And to marry one was anyone’s dream. In the water around the rock where Sicheng sat were his numerous older siblings and their respective spouses, all of them wearing their finest netting and shells. Sicheng spoke and laughed with them and his pointy teeth shone with a predatory sparkle in the sun’s dying light. Even over such a great distance, even among so thick a crowd, Sicheng’s hunter instincts must have made him aware of Xiaojun’s eyes on him. He looked up, right in their direction, but Xiaojun lowered his gaze back down to Renjun before their eyes ever met. “Really, Renjun. I am happy for you.”

 

“When are _you_ going to get married,” Renjun asked him. “How come that hasn’t happened already?”

 

“No one has been interested,” Xiaojun replied. He lowered himself down into the water so that mainly his eyes and forehead poked out above the surface.

 

“Really?” Renjun looked taken aback. “With the way you look?”

 

“No one has been interested in a man who is not a warrior,” Xiaojun clarified.

 

“I see,” said Renjun.

 

His smile was genuine enough, but Xiaojun couldn’t help but think that this was yet another way Renjun was showing him that he was better than him. _Look at me, I’m so spectacular that a prince turned his fin on his arranged marriage just to choose me._

 

“It’ll happen soon,” said Renjun.

 

Xiaojun knew he was being a bad friend. At least inside his head. And perhaps now outside of his head. “Never, perhaps,” he stated. “Is that what you want to hear?”

 

Renjun gasped and paddled backwards in the water as if Xiaojun had just raked claws across his face. “No, Xiaojun. Why would you think that?”

 

Xiaojun spun backwards through the water, putting space between them. “Nothing, nothing… Now go and don’t leave your new husband waiting too long.” And with that, he flipped backwards beneath the waves and hurriedly swam out into open water, ignoring Renjun’s cries of his name.

 

〜

 

With the songs of the festivities pulsing through the water around him like sonar, muddying his mind, Xiaojun swam and swam aimlessly until, without realizing it, he had made it all of the way to shore.

 

That hadn’t been his intention.

 

His instinct screamed at him to flip tail and swim back out to sea but he fought against it and allowed a particularly large wave to carry him even closer. He swam forward until he could feel sand and broken seashells and washed-up trash gently scratch at his long, turquoise tail. Here was a safe distance, he thought. Close enough to see but not close enough to _be seen_ under the cover of such a moonless night.

 

There was a tiny village of some kind in front of him. Primarily for fishing, if the number of wooden piers was any clue. Small human-made caves made of stone and metal stood among the rocks and trees a short distance away from where ocean and land kissed in frothy bubbles. Bonfires lined the sand, the flames reaching high and hot as if attempting to touch the stars that dotted the night sky. Humans danced and sang to music that thumped out of metal boxes and thirstily drank liquids from multicolored bottles. Xiaojun smelled dead fish in the air.

 

“Everyone is celebrating something tonight,” he said, keeping his mouth and gills beneath the water. “I wonder if one of them is also getting married to a prince.” It was difficult to tell, though. None of the figures that he could see were wearing a crown.

 

He should have been afraid. Really.

 

Humans were terrible, terrifying things that littered the ocean with their garbage and kidnapped the fish and crabs in great numbers, dragging nets behind their giant, floating metal boxes. If one of the humans spotted him, surely they would string him up and roast him over one of their fires!

 

Xiaojun’s fins tingled as the ocean shifted and changed around him. The tide was… going out? Already? That couldn’t be right. He closed his eyes and let a few moments pass. Sure enough, each time a wave receded, it left more and more of his scales exposed to the dry night air. If he did not move, he’d be beached. Trapped.

 

He had just started to flip himself around to leave when a different disturbance sent his fins to tingling: the sand beneath him was trembling with approaching footsteps.

 

Xiaojun opened his black eyes wide with fear as a human waded through the water towards him. They must have spotted him from the beach and came over to investigate! How could he be so careless? Defensively, he bared his rows of sharp teeth, raised his clawed hands and let out a menacing, low snarl.

 

“Whoa, whoa, easy, easy,” the human said fearlessly, raising both of his soft-fingered hands. “I won’t hurt you.”

 

Lies! Xiaojun knew not to fall for such a trick. Where a mermaid bore their weapons on the outside, with their teeth and claws and coral armor, humans bore their weapons on the inside. Their words. Their personalities. Their crooked desires. Xiaojun had heard more than enough horror stories told beneath the phosphorescent blue-green glow of deep sea cave walls. He knew that humans would bring only trouble to merfolk.

 

“You’re a beautiful, beautiful thing, aren’t you?” the human sang out.

 

Why wasn’t it afraid? Why wasn’t it backing away? Xiaojun snarled again, louder, and snapped his teeth.

 

The human continued to approach him. Although now a tad more slowly.

 

Making the human go away no longer seemed to be an option so Xiaojun focused on his own escape. With all the strength he could muster, he dragged his body over the sea floor, trying to get enough water beneath him to swim away. Yet for every bit of distance he thought he created between them, whenever he looked over his shoulder, the human had closed that distance with its long, slender legs.

 

Humans looked so strange. Their bodies were shaped so weirdly, Xiaojun thought. They had no scales to protect their soft, tanned flesh. No coral hardened around the neck and shoulders and back. No fins for swimming. No sharp teeth for tearing. Xiaojun snarled at the approaching figure again, even swiping out a claw to keep himself safe. Even so, the human waded through the calf-deep water faster than Xiaojun could crawl away.

 

Now the panic set in. Xiaojun was going to wind up like all of those terrible stories now. A moan of despair crawled out from the back of his throat.

 

“I won’t hurt you,” the human repeated. His hair was black and wavy and long like damp seaweed and his mouth was the same soft, pink color as the meat of a clam. He was practically standing on top of Xiaojun now. “Wow. Look at you. A marvel!” He reached out a hand towards the merman.

 

Xiaojun swiped at it. He felt his claws connect with flesh. He watched as blood drizzled out of the man’s fresh wound.

 

“Ahh! Well… I deserved that,” the human said, wincing and hissing, pressing his injured palm to his chest to slow the bleeding. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He knelt in the water right in front of Xiaojun and did not flinch even as a wave rushed forward and crashed against his bare, unprotected chest. “I just want to look at you. Can I do that?”

 

Xiaojun thrashed in the shallow water, curling his tail beneath himself in an attempt to toss his body into deeper waters. A storm must have been passing over the ocean, out beyond the horizon, he reasoned. There was no other explanation for the tide to be receding so fast! Every time he thought he had made it far enough out, a wave receded, taking the deeper waters with it. Xiaojun turned to the human, frightened to see that the man was leaning so close to him, right into his face. He raised a hand, prepared to swipe a claw at the man again but the human caught him by the arm with his own hand to halt the attack. Xiaojun panicked. He wriggled and pulled.

 

“Easy, easy,” the human whispered to him. “My name is Hendery. What’s yours? Can you speak?”

 

His proximity irritated Xiaojun. His _calmness_ irritated Xiaojun. He should have been terrified but the look in his eyes seemed to be... adoration.

 

“So I’m not seeing things,” said the human, Hendery, placing a gentle hand on Xiaojun’s pelvic fin. “Torso of a man. Tail of a fish. Just like the legends.” He crawled closer still, bringing his face well within range of Xiaojun’s teeth. “I won’t hurt you, alright? Let me help you.”

 

Before Xiaojun had a chance to put his teeth into Hendery’s neck in a bid to protect himself, the human had wrapped a surprisingly strong set of arms around his body. Xiaojun went completely still and whimpered at the uncomfortable pressure against his gills. He had heard stories of what happened when a human caught one of his people. Tales of being roasted over fires, trapped in nets, kept in tanks and tubs, tortured and forced to do tricks… They were all stories used to scare children into staying away from the shore and now Xiaojun was going to pay the price for his curiosity. His temporary lapse in judgment. Already, the human had lifted him clear out of the water. Xiaojun could already feel his gills drying out and his breaths started coming faster, more erratic. He squeezed his eyes shut and thrashed about, swinging his tail furiously at the man’s legs but nothing stopped the human from carrying him to his doom.

 

“I know you’re scared,” Hendery said, grunting with pain every time Xiaojun hit him. “But I swear that I’m not going to bring you harm.”

 

He was telling the truth.

 

Now that Xiaojun had exhausted himself and hung limply in the man’s arms, he looked up and saw that the human was carrying him farther out into the ocean, not towards the shore. After a few more steps, Hendery came to a stop and lowered Xiaojun into the waves. Not completely but _enough_. Xiaojun breathed in deeply through his gills. His strength renewed, he resumed his thrashing in the man’s arms, clawing at every bit of flesh he could reach as he fought to be free.

 

“I will let you go,” the human bargained, “if you promise I get to see you again.”

 

Xiaojun was tiring himself out all over again. If he was strong and relentless like Renjun, the human would be dead right about now, reduced to hunks of torn meat and clouds of blood floating across the waves and attracting sharks from kilometers around. But Xiaojun was weak and his claws had only managed to slice the shallowest of cuts into the human’s fleshy sides.

 

“Do you promise?”

 

Not caring the tiniest bit about promises, Xiaojun bobbed his head like a buoy caught in a riptide.

 

At long last, Hendery let him go.

 

Xiaojun relished in the feeling of the ocean surrounding him on all sides. He moved to swim away but didn’t do it fast enough.

 

Hendery grabbed hold of the shiny necklace around Xiaojun’s throat. Some human trinket he had freed from a shipwreck when he was but a child. With his uninjured hand, Hendery pulled the necklace of silver and jewels up and over Xiaojun’s head and clutched it to his chest even after Xiaojun bit his hand to retrieve it. “You get this back,” the man grunted, “the next time you come visit me. How about that?”

 

Xiaojun didn’t care. The necklace was replaceable. His freedom was not.

 

Without wasting another second, he dove under the waves and made a mad dash for home.

 

〜

 

The swim back to the wedding celebration seemed longer than his swim away from it. He blamed it on the churning current and his own haunted thoughts. Even as an unreasonable fear made him think that every dark shadow behind him was that human still coming after him, he also couldn’t shake the budding sense of fascination foaming up in his heart.

 

Every time he closed his eyes, that human’s face was there.

 

“Hen-Deh-Ree,” he chanted as he swam, aiming his body towards the lights and sounds of the royal wedding party. “Hen-Deh-Ree.”

 

As if the warrior had been on the lookout for him, Renjun broke away from the crowd and sped towards him with wicked speed.

 

The tingling of Xiaojun’s fins as Renjun raced in his direction was the only warning he got to keep the human’s strange name off of his tongue before he was overheard.

 

“Where have you been,” Renjun wailed, colliding with him and sending them both into a bubbly tumble. When they were right side up again, he continued. “You missed the start of the feast! Sicheng even asked to see you.” He grabbed hold of Xiaojun’s wrists and pulled him towards the ocean floor before Xiaojun could protest. “I can feel your pulse racing. How far did you swim out?”

 

“I just wanted to clear my head,” Xiaojun said. It was the truth. He’d wanted to swim so hard that Hendery vanished from his mind like seafoam. He struggled in Renjun’s grasp but it did him no good. Renjun was strong and he was determined not to lose track of his friend a second time in a single night. That and Xiaojun had done enough flailing about tonight to last a lifetime. He just didn’t have the strength to fight.

 

The celebration was in full swing now.

 

Down on the ocean floor, crystal growths spiraled out of the rock and sand. Their innards glowed deep purple and ghastly green, throwing odd shadows in every direction and turning the scales of the merfolk a multitude of incomprehensible colors.

 

Long, stone tables were laid out with plenty of food: crab meat, shark tongue, eel tail and mollusks. Merchants had set up shop in between whale rib cages and shipwrecks, trading algae, pearl and piles of fish scales for human trinkets that sparkled with the shine of metal. Someone with a spectacular voice sang over music played from bones and performers struck clods of volcanic rock together, creating multicolor sparks of gaseous, green fire. Dancers and revelers saw Renjun coming and twirled and flipped and spun out of his way as he passed. It took several long moments for Xiaojun to remember why. Renjun was another of their princes now and however humble his life had been a few months prior, he now wore the mantle of royalty and, thus, held the citizen’s utmost respect. On and on, the partiers drifted out of their way until Xiaojun could see who it was Renjun was taking him to: Prince Sicheng.

 

The merman in question had draped himself across a bed of colorful, curling sea anemones, their pinks and greens and blues and oranges in stark contrast to his inky, dark scales.

 

“I managed to find him, Your Highness,” Renjun announced with the bare minimum of a bow. He puffed out his chest and shoved Xiaojun forward as if presenting the bloody stump of a tiger shark’s fin to the Chief of the Hunt.

 

“You wanted to see me?” Xiaojun dipped his head respectfully.

 

For a moment, Prince Sicheng just stared at him, his black hair dancing around his scalp in the current. He crunched a live shrimp between his jagged teeth, shell and all, but didn’t speak or blink or even take his eyes off of Xiaojun, even as the shrimp fought to escape his teeth.

 

Xiaojun cowered, fearing Sicheng somehow knew about his encounter with the human. He ran a hand over his arms and chest, worrying that Hendery’s blood still stained his scales, that the human’s scent somehow clung to his hair.

 

Then Sicheng smiled. “I was worried you had gotten caught out in the storm, Xiaojun,” he said. “You were the only one on my guest list I could not find. Now that I see you with my own eyes, I’m relieved.”

 

Xiaojun lowered his eyes to the swaying anemone. Sicheng’s scales and coral shell must have thickened and hardened enough for him to not be bothered by their constant stinging.

 

Sicheng continued where he left off. “The storm rolled in quickly. It forced the party under the waves sooner than planned.”

 

“I somehow avoided it directly, Your Majesty,” Xiaojun answered. “But I felt the wicked shift in the tides out in the open ocean and I came back to the reef as soon as I could.”

 

Sicheng nodded slowly. Briefly, he tilted his head in Renjun’s direction, almost as if seeking his counsel.

 

Renjun nodded, accepting Xiaojun’s story.

 

This made Sicheng nod in agreement. “As long as you are okay,” he said, returning his attention to Xiaojun and softening his tone.

 

“Since we’re here,” said Renjun, floating towards his new husband but drifting noticeable distant above the anemone, “we have big news, Xiaojun.”

 

“He shouldn’t know,” Sicheng told him sharply. “It’s not even our decision to tell it.”

 

Renjun plowed on regardless. “Xiaojun, you didn’t hear this from me but Sicheng may or may not be carrying.”

 

Xiaojun almost dumbly asked _carrying what_ until the answer dawned on him: eggs. Already? Xiaojun opened his mouth.

 

Sicheng beat him to it. “We just wanted to check up on you, since we feared the storm had taken you. If all is well, you are dismissed.” He reached a hand out towards Xiaojun, human-made rings crafted of silver with sparkling diamonds set in the bands were perched on each narrow finger.

 

Of course.

 

Xiaojun drifted forward, clasped Sicheng’s offered hand with both of his own and kissed the royal’s knuckles. “Enjoy the rest of the evening, Your Majesty. I hope I did not disturb your alone time with your new spouse.” He pulled away and started to float past Renjun.

 

His old friend held out a hand to stop him. “Xiaojun.”

 

Even in the depths of the cool current, Xiaojun’s scales flushed. Was Renjun going to force him to kiss his hand, too?

 

But instead, Renjun said, “Enjoy the rest of the party. You look like you could use some fun. Your tail is so tense. You’ll chip your scales like that.” He lowered his hand and then smiled weakly.

 

Xiaojun floated away. He almost couldn’t smile back.

 

〜

 

A day or so after the royal wedding, the gathered merfolk had dispersed back to their own chosen corners of the oceans, leaving the reef hauntingly empty.

 

Xiaojun lay curled in a circular groove on his part of the reef, too tired to sleep. This far below the ocean’s surface, it was impossible to tell if it was night or day but the time didn’t matter when there was nothing to look forward to.

 

A lean, dark shape passed through Xiaojun’s vision before moving closer and closer. It didn’t take longer than that for Xiaojun to recognize the smell, the shape, the color, the feel. “Yuta?”

 

The mermaid from a different ocean floated down towards him cautiously. “I thought you were asleep but it seems you’re just… feeling blue.” He motioned towards Xiaojun’s blue scales in a poor attempt at a joke.

 

It was enough to make Xiaojun roll over and laugh. “Haven’t heard that one before,” he grunted sarcastically.

 

Yuta settled onto the reef next to him. He had a striking face and smooth, dangerously red scales. His hair held the same volcanic hue and his narrow body was decorated with shards of obsidian woven into bits of rope and glittering yellow fish scales pressed into his skin. He was no warrior, so his scales were still beautiful and intact, no scars marked his flesh. He propped his head up on a clawed hand and stared at Xiaojun intently. “Are you okay?”

 

A question like that could have meant _anything_ but since Yuta was the only one who knew Xiaojun’s best kept secret, there was only one true purpose behind the question. “Am I okay watching him marry someone who is not me? No.”

 

Yuta made a low humming noise of sympathy in his throat and inched closer to Xiaojun’s side. “I’m sorry. You must be hurting. How long have you loved him?”

 

“Eleven months.”

 

“Sounds unbelievable but I suppose anything is possible. How long have the two of them been together?”

 

Xiaojun repeated, “Eleven months.”

 

This caused Yuta to hum again but there was decidedly more confusion in the sound this time. “Does he know?”

 

Xiaojun rolled away from him. He had been watching a school of fish up above but Yuta’s arrival had distracted him. He squinted into the dark depths until he caught sight of the gleam of their scales again. “I kept it a secret from him but… I think he knows. I think he always knew. The whole time.”

 

“What makes you think so,” Yuta asked, humming more than speaking, his voice vibrating across the edges of Xiaojun’s fins.

 

Slowly, Xiaojun rolled back towards his friend and looked Yuta in the eye. “I feel it in the way he looks at me.”

 

“With longing?” asked Yuta, brimming with hope.

 

Xiaojun corrected, “with pity.”

 

〜

 

It was four or five days later when Xiaojun dared to draw close to the shore again.

 

He had only gone to get a quick look, he told himself. Just to see how different the place looked during the day as opposed to the middle of the night.

 

What he hadn’t expected was for Hendery to spot him first. “It’s you, my precious treasure.”

 

Xiaojun hadn’t felt the human’s movements in the water because the human _wasn’t_ in the water. He sat at the end of a long pier, wearing a soft, white linen shirt over his torso and pale, blue shorts over his legs. His slender ankles and pretty toes hovered just out of reach above Xiaojun’s head. Xiaojun drew back, startled. He thought he would be safe from human eyes by sticking to the cool shadows beneath the pier!

 

“If it weren’t for all of the marks you left on my body,” Hendery said calmly, “I would have started to believe that I’d dreamed you.” He raised the hem of his white shirt and exposed the raw red lines that criss-crossed his skin, the aftermath of Xiaojun’s panic and rage.

 

The merman would not feel guilty. In fact, he’d leave such slashes again if the human approached him.

 

“But… look at you. You’re real. I didn’t dream you.” Hendery lowered his shirt and stared down at Xiaojun in the water, smiling as if he weren’t a breath away from death by claws or drowning.

 

Oddly enough, his fearlessness made the merman relax. “Hen-Deh-Ree.” Xiaojun hadn’t even meant to say it aloud.

 

Hendery laughed. His flat teeth looked alien, borderline revolting. “So you _can_ speak?” Without warning, he slid to the edge of the pier and dropped the short distance into the water.

 

They were right in front of each other. Both of them treading water, Xiaojun with slow, clockwise flutters of his tail and Hendery with faster, back and forth kicks of his legs.

 

Xiaojun should have attacked him - it would have been the right thing to do! - but instead, he almost giggled as the ripples and bubbles of Hendery’s body splashing about in the water danced over his gills and fins.

 

“You look so much like us,” Hendery broke the silence. “Even speak the same tongue. At least I can only assume you understand me.” He raised his palms to either side of Xiaojun’s face, cupping his jaw before he moved away. “But the differences are many. Your teeth. Your eyes. Your ears. Your… those are nostrils, correct?” He ran one of his hands through Xiaojun’s hair and the tips of his fingers came away dirtied by seashell bits, sea slime and colorless barnacles. Instead of flinching away from the briny dirtiness, Hendery almost seemed enamored by it. He looked into Xiaojun’s black eyes. “How many more of you are there?” He peered past Xiaojun as if trying to catch sight of other merpeople. “Because it would be terribly lonely for you if you were in such a big, big place by yourself.”

 

Xiaojun resisted the urge to tell Hendery everything. That there were thousands upon thousands of them and that he was never truly alone but he forced himself to remain mute.

 

Hendery must have sensed his decision. “You aren’t going to tell me anything, are you?” He looked into Xiaojun’s eyes, his smile never faltering. “I don’t know how but I know you understand me. Not just my words but my feelings, too. You see, I’m alone, too.”

 

That couldn’t be right. Xiaojun had seen the numerous other humans dancing on this very beach just the other night.

 

“I’m surrounded by others and yet I’m alone,” Hendery mumbled. “I, too, have watched someone I love choose another.”

 

Xiaojun gasped. He would have pulled away if Hendery hadn’t tightened his grip on his face. “Am I right?” His tone was almost teasing. “I was just making a guess… but your reaction proves I’m right. You _can_ understand me.”

 

Xiaojun grabbed Hendery’s wrist. Not to push the human’s hand away but to closer inspect it.

 

Hendery’s hand was so different from his own, he realized. No webbing between the fingers to help him catch the current. No hardened bits of coral around his knuckles. No claws to help him fight. Really? What kind of world was it out on land? What kind of world did humans live in where they could live without protecting themselves?

 

Hendery misinterpreted the look of confusion on Xiaojun’s face. “The wound you gave me already healed for the most part.” He raised his free hand and pointed to the white line of raised skin that decorated his palm. “I hope it scars. I hope it never goes away. I want to remember you always, you beautiful, beautiful creature.”

 

One of Hendery’s fingers traced soft, simple patterns around the gills at Xiaojun’s neck. The touch ignited something deep inside of Xiaojun that had laid dormant all of his life. He met Hendery’s gaze and pulled his lips back, revealing his teeth. Not in a snarl but in a--

 

“Now that is one phenomenal smile,” Hendery whispered to him in awe.

 

It hadn’t occurred to Xiaojun until that moment that Hendery looked at him with the same rapt fascination that Renjun looked at Prince Sicheng. It was that very stare that had turned a pauper into a prince.

 

Xiaojun stiffened. He suddenly remembered how dangerous this was!

 

He was allowing the enemy of his kind to touch and poke and prod at him without any retaliation. Xiaojun wondered if he should bite off a finger or, better, sing a song to muddy the man’s mind and lure him beneath the waves where saltwater would force all of the air out of his lungs. If he were Renjun or Prince Sicheng, there was no way in the deep blue ocean that the human would feel so comfortable being so close. It was probably because Xiaojun was so small and weak that Hen-Deh-Ree believed he was safe. Xiaojun bared his teeth - this time in a snarl - and let a quiet hiss spill from off of his tongue. Yet Xiaojun’s instincts were once again shoved aside by some odd, foreign fluttering in his ribs. Hendery hadn’t hurt him when they had last met so he did not want to hurt Hendery now.

 

He stopped his hissing. He shut his mouth.

 

“Hendery!” A lilting voice sang out from somewhere above them. Then, more firmly, “Hendery! What did I tell you about fooling around by the pier? Where are you? Don't scare me half to death again!”

 

The voice sounded close.

 

Xiaojun attempted to flee but Hendery held him still.

 

The human ran his thumb along Xiaojun’s bottom lip. When he spoke, it was in a near-whisper. Hardly louder than the lapping of waves. “I didn’t think you would come back for it so I don’t have your necklace with me at the moment.” Such a statement made him smile. “You’ll have to come back and see me again. How about that?”

 

Xiaojun answered him by pulling himself free of the human’s hands and swimming back out to sea, not looking back even once.

 

〜

 

A month passed.

 

Summer dragged on and the oceans grew steadily warmer, the currents grew steadily faster.

 

There had been an official royal announcement that Sicheng was carrying eggs. The royal physician took half a day poking in his brood pouch to count them: 1,576. Significantly fewer than some of Sicheng’s siblings but they would still be royal, welcome additions.

 

The news hit Xiaojun particularly hard. He thought he’d mended his heart but the fresh sting only reminded him that it still lay in pieces within his chest.

 

So he busied himself with menial tasks. When the tides were calm, he spent time in the Great Coral Hall, practicing his singing. When the tides were rough, he combed the ocean floor to scavenge for new human trinkets that the sea had claimed. He found jewels and mirrors and metal pieces and bottles. He also rescued fish from nets and traps of floating plastic.

 

Before he knew it, he found himself back at that particular shore, watching that particular village.

 

He was smart enough to steer clear of the piers. Steer clear of the floating metal boats the humans rode the waves on. He stayed out in the open waters and observed from afar, soon able to identify Hendery even at a distance. It was easy to recognize the man’s height, the man’s hair, his graceful gait. The human spent the majority of his days sitting at the edge of the pier, watching the ocean waves. Xiaojun knew the man was looking for him but he refused to swim any closer.

 

He refused to get attached.

 

Even as Hendery’s face clouded his mind every time he drifted off to sleep among the corals.

 

〜

 

Xiaojun was surprised to receive a formal invitation for dinner at the palace. It came to him directly from Renjun, a note hastily scratched onto the inside of a gold-colored conch shell. Perhaps there actually were benefits to having a freshly-minted prince as a friend?

 

That night, Xiaojun scrubbed his turquoise scales until they glittered and decorated his hair with braids of rope and bundles of frilly jellyfish tentacles and then he left his reef and swam for the palace.

 

The palace was a beautiful but ancient thing; a massive, human-made metal ship that had sunk to the ocean floor centuries ago. Sea life clung to the ship’s rusted, barnacle-covered sides. Fish darted in and out of spindly tufts of seaweed and phosphorescent plants filled the ship’s halls and cabins with a pale, orange light.

 

Showing his invitation to the palace guards, Xiaojun was escorted past the gates and led down one long and narrow corridor after another until he was brought to a frighteningly empty dining hall.

 

Xiaojun had thought this was a banquet of some sort; one of those royal feasts that had everyone on the reef gossiping. He didn’t think he would be that night’s only guest.

 

Renjun started to wave him over frantically but then remembered his new station and beckoned Xiaojun towards him with a far more dignified gesture.

 

Xiaojun swam inside the hall. Curtains made of human jewelry hung in front of the windows and doors and the tables bolted to the floor were draped in rope netting and delicate seaweed weavings. There was one long table in the center of the room that held an absolute feast. That was to be expected of the royal chefs but what came as a surprise was that Prince Sicheng himself was also in attendance, lounging at the head of the table with his elbow propped on the metal surface and his chin propped up on his hand. His presence was all well and good except for the fact that Sicheng glared at Xiaojun from across the decked-out table like Xiaojun wasn’t much different from a fish he wanted to gut from mouth to tail.

 

Xiaojun avoided making direct eye contact.

 

Renjun bit into the curled tail of a skewered seahorse that was about as long as his finger. “I don’t see you as much as I used to,” he said as a way to start a conversation. Then he waved a hand towards the food. “Please. Help yourself.”

 

Xiaojun settled uncomfortably onto one of the human’s bolted-down chairs and wasted no time tearing into the flesh of a clownfish that sat on a dish on his side of the table. He sighed at its delicate, light flavor. The meat held the kind of crispness that could only come spending a few moments above a volcanic vent. Xiaojun glanced up, met Renjun’s narrowed, black eyes and realized that the younger merman was actually waiting on a response from him. He spit a few loose, orange fish scales out of his mouth and replied, “Of course we don’t see each other much. It’s because you are a prince now.” He doubted that he’d kept the bitterness out of his tone. Then he swiftly added, “Your Majesty.”

 

Renjun visibly bristled at the title. “Don’t call me that.”

 

At such weighted words, Xiaojun raised his gaze across the table towards Sicheng. The Prince didn’t seem particularly bothered by Renjun’s bucking of traditions. Then again, it didn’t seem like he was listening too keenly to their conversation to begin with as he continued to stare Xiaojun down, voraciously chewing the meat off a shark rib as if he wished it were Xiaojun’s arm instead.

 

Once again, Xiaojun lowered his gaze. Sicheng would probably always think of him as a coward now.

 

Renjun continued, “I used to show you all of my trophies and spoils when I returned from my hunts but now I can never seem to track you down. Where have you been?”

 

“Out and about,” Xiaojun replied cryptically. “When everyone you care for abandons you for the palace, you come up with ways to spend your free time.”

 

“Come now. I didn’t abandon you,” said Renjun.

 

“Before the wedding celebration, I hadn’t seen you in days.” Weeks, maybe. Xiaojun shoved another chunk of clownfish in his mouth just to keep from outright yelling.

 

“I was getting married,” Renjun explained curtly.

 

Sicheng made a low noise at the back of his throat. Not quite irritation but an emotion bordering close to it.

 

Renjun let his mouth sit open for a moment, bubbles tumbling out from between his lips. His dark green tail swayed back and forth as he lost himself in thought. Then his eyes focused on Xiaojun again. “I’ve been asking around but all of your neighbors say the same thing: that you spend most of your days outside of the reef, out in the open ocean somewhere.”

 

Xiaojun gulped. Now he knew why he was here. Catching up with an old friend over dinner was just a false pretense. This was really an interrogation.

 

“Need I remind you that the open ocean is dangerous when you’re alone. There are so many things out there that want to hurt us.” Renjun kept his voice flat and unimposing. “Sharks, squids, orcas, moray eels, manta rays, octopi…”

 

“And humans,” Sicheng added, the first words he’d spoken the entire meal. “Humans are the most dangerous thing of all.”

 

“I understand,” Xiaojun mumbled like a scolded child. He forced himself to take another bite out of the clownfish even though his appetite had mysteriously just left him. “I get it.”

 

“ _Do_ you,” Renjun pressed, leaning forward to grab another seahorse skewer. “It’s a matter of life and death, Xiaojun. Life and death.”

 

“I just like to swim,” Xiaojun said. “At least the open ocean is a loneliness I can choose.”

 

Renjun ignored his dramatics. “Didn’t you hear? Just the other week, we barely managed to bring Yukhei back and treat his wounds. The royal physician thought he was done for and almost quit in the middle of treatment.”

 

Xiaojun hadn’t heard anything about that. “Something happened to Yukhei?” The man was almost like a neighbor.

 

“We found out far too late that he’d been cavorting with some human girl for several weeks, thinking that he was in _love_ with her or something.” Renjun rolled his eyes. “They even made preparations to have a makeshift wedding of their own only for her to trap him in a crab cage! We aren’t sure of an exact timeframe but we’ve guessed that he had spent several days locked away. She’d trapped him. Tortured him! Oh, it’s brutal, Xiaojun. Most of his scales have been pried off. Do you get what I’m saying? She filed down his claws, cut off all of his hair, tore holes in his fins. When our scouts found him, she had dried him out over a fire pit like she wanted to roast him and eat him!” Renjun realized he was yelling and forced himself to calm down and speak at a less screechy volume. “When the palace received word of his capture, Prince Kun almost didn’t want to go rescue him. And for good reason. Yukhei broke our laws about fraternizing with humans and, let’s be honest, paying for it with his life was a fitting punishment… but the younger princes insisted--”

 

“Not me,” Sicheng clarified.

 

Renjun continued as if he hadn’t heard. “--that we mount a rescue operation. I was one of the warriors they sent to that island to get him. We waited until high tide and then rushed the beach. I killed at least six humans with my bare hands to get him back, Xiaojun. Six! And who knows how many humans the other warriors that went had to slaughter. We couldn’t leave any witnesses. _No_ humans can know we exist.” All of his words had exhausted him. He tore off a seahorse tail and chewed slowly, sinking back into his chair and staring off into the distance at nothing. “It reminds me of the good old days,” he sighed, “when the hunting parties would chase down pirate ships and sink them just for fun.”

 

Xiaojun knew he was being warned. He could be silly but he wasn’t _dumb_. In the most roundabout way possible, Renjun was informing him that he knew of Xiaojun’s visits to the coast and this was an intervention if there ever was one.

 

Renjun’s expression grew sad and he closed his pitch black eyes. “And poor Yukhei. His scales have turned gray from the shock. You know, he hasn’t spoken a word since that evening. Not to anyone. He must be in so much pain. Physical and mental. Even now. It might have been easier for him if we had left him to his fate. If we had let that human kill him.” He shrugged like he was perfectly okay with either outcome.

 

“All merfolk who betray their kind for landwalkers should die,” said Sicheng suddenly. Firmly.

 

“But I don’t know any landwalkers,” Xiaojun spoke up. He and Hendery had only spoken briefly. Did that count as _knowing_?

 

“I hope not,” said Sicheng. He narrowed his eyes with sudden anger. “Because we won’t spare any merfolk who do. We stay away from the shores for a reason and Yukhei is proof of what happens when you don’t listen.”

 

Silence filled the dining hall. Their food was all but forgotten.

 

Xiaojun felt like falling apart.

 

“There are numerous predators out there,” Renjun stated calmly. He finally seemed to pick up on the fact that his harshness was upsetting his long time friend. “We are but vulnerable guppies in the grand scheme of things. We can never be too careful, Xiaojun. These laws are in place to protect us.” Renjun reached out a hand as if to place it reassuringly on top of Xiaojun’s but he had misinterpreted the distance. Because of the width of the dining table, his hand fell short by a fin’s length. “And I won’t be able to live with myself if something were to happen to you now that I can no longer be beside you to protect you.” As if the reason weren’t already obvious, he glanced towards Sicheng. Renjun looked back across the table at Xiaojun. “If you are going to keep going beyond the reef, at least pair up with someone who is a good fighter. How about Yuta?”

 

Pair up? And Yuta? An unbelievable concept. “Yuta spends all of his time with Doyoung now.” Just like he’d spent all of his time with Jaehyun a month ago and Taeil a month before that and Taeyong a month before _that_. How Yuta wasn’t floating around the reef followed by a thousand children was beyond Xiaojun’s understanding.

 

“That’s too bad,” Renjun exhaled. “You seem to have a knack for letting possible mates slip away from you.” Instead of eating, he was now quite literally playing with his food.

 

Xiaojun looked across the table, taking in the sight of Renjun’s scars and bitten-off flesh and burn marks from jellyfish stings. Proof of his countless hunts. He had to remind himself that one of the reasons why Renjun was such a fearsome warrior was because he’d spent his childhood watching Xiaojun’s back, protecting him from overzealous bullies who hated the fact that Xiaojun was so good at predicting the currents and beating everyone to the good scavenging locations. Renjun had spent his entire childhood, it seemed, using his teeth and claws. Xiaojun lowered his gaze to the shredded, half-eaten clownfish he still held in his hands. If he was stronger and could fend for himself, Renjun wouldn’t have had to become so good at fighting. And if Renjun hadn’t gotten so good at fighting, perhaps he never would have caught Prince Sicheng’s eye. "I can protect myself."

 

This made Renjun’s dark eyes go wide.

 

Sicheng straight up snorted, bubbles billowing out of his nose.

 

“I hope that’s true,” Renjun told him, properly eating his meal once more. “Because humans are wily, crafty and dangerous. They have methods of deception we merfolk can’t begin to see through.”

 

“And the last thing we want,” Sicheng muttered, “is for one of them to use you to get to the rest of us.”

 

〜

 

It probably wasn’t the best of ideas, but Xiaojun went to visit Yukhei late the next day.

 

Yukhei wasn’t exactly being held captive and it wasn’t like there were guards posted around him to keep him from escaping. Despite the severity of his crimes, the princes had decided to leave him by himself. Everything the human had done to him was punishment enough, they said.

 

Besides, some forms of imprisonment didn’t require anchor chains.

 

Xiaojun swam up to the construct made of carefully stacked stones a short distance away from the Great Coral Hall. It was where Yukhei was being kept. Or, rather, the only place he’d thought to stay. When Xiaojun first floated inside, he didn’t even _see_ Yukhei until he was almost right on top of him. That’s how still the merman sat, his scales as gray as the stone he leaned against. His hands were folded between his pectoral fins and his black eyes stared unseeing at the wall past Xiaojun’s head.

 

Xiaojun ran his clawed fingers over the bioluminescent algae that clung to the stacked stones and the friction made them glow brighter and fill the tiny alcove with reddish light. Now that he could properly see, he made himself as comfortable as he could on the sandy floor in front of the merman. “Hello, friend,” he attempted. He glanced around. The space was tight and compact. If he reached out both of his arms, he was certain he could touch the stone walls with his fingers. “They really had you sitting here alone in the dark?”

 

Yukhei didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. Wouldn’t respond.

 

“I… I really don’t know what to say,” Xiaojun muttered.

 

There wasn’t much that could be said. Yukhei was proof that humans were dangerous and that the only thing they longed for was to inflict pain upon the merfolk. He didn’t have to say anything, Xiaojun could _see_ the truth and Renjun’s words hadn’t done the damage justice. Yukhei looked like he’d been chewed up and spit out by a Great White Shark. Cuts and bruises criss-crossed his torso and face. Entire chunks had been torn out of his ears and fins. His expression looked so hollowed out - so pitiful and lost and _in pain_ \- that Xiaojun hoped someone would put him out of his misery.

 

“You poor thing.” He wanted to cry.

 

At long last, Yukhei seemed to acknowledge Xiaojun’s presence. He turned his head ever so slightly in order to more properly face the younger merman.

 

But that was it. Whether Yukhei actually saw him or not was impossible to determine.

 

“Is this how I’ll end up?” Xiaojun asked. Surely, Hendery wouldn’t do something like this to him... but that was the exact same thought Yukhei must have had. Xiaojun glanced over his shoulder and checked the opening in the stacked stone wall to make sure no one was watching, that no one was listening in, then he leaned towards Yukhei and let all of his feelings pour out of him. “I think I may be in love with a human,” he confessed in a rush. “I haven’t seen him in days but he is all I think about. He looks at me like I’m some precious treasure that he discovered and I still remember how soft his hands were on my scales. Every time I see him, my body aches on the inside. Like I’m missing an important piece.” He searched Yukhei’s blank mask of a face for any sign of recognition or reassurance. Yukhei gave him none. Xiaojun didn’t know why he was saying all of this knowing he would not get an answer. Then again, that may have been _exactly_ why he was saying all of this. Xiaojun asked the big question, “Was being in love… was it worth it?”

 

But the answer was staring him in the face. Scarred and unblinking and silent. Wasting away to nothing.

 

Yukhei used to be so bright and colorful, Xiaojun recalled. They didn’t speak to each other much, even though they lived on opposite ends of the same reef, but Xiaojun knew who Yukhei was. It was impossible not to know him. His laughter could be heard kilometers away like dolphin chatter and his bright yellow scales could catch even the faintest glimmer of sunlight and send his whole body sparkling. Now all of that life and happiness was gone. Snuffed out. The very color had been drained from him. What few scales of his that hadn’t been ripped from his flesh had been sanded down and made dull, never to shine again.

 

“Are they even feeding you,” Xiaojun had to know. He reached beneath his pectoral fin and pried loose one of the prawns he’d stashed away there. He approached Yukhei slowly and carefully, waving the food in front of the man’s face. When that got no response, he used a finger to pull open Yukhei’s lips and shove the head of the prawn inside. When that didn’t work, he firmly gripped Yukhei’s jaw and pulled it open only to jump back and yelp at what he saw.

 

The human had even gotten to Yukhei’s teeth! She’d ground them down to short, blunt stumps. Yukhei’s gums were still bloody and swollen from the abuse.

 

Xiaojun retreated hastily until his back was to the stones, the prawns floating forgotten in the water between them. He had to remind himself that such damage was caused not just by a human, but by a human who claimed to _love_ Yukhei.

 

“Is all love just poison?” Xiaojun asked.

 

It felt that way.

 

His love was married now. But not to him. Xiaojun had been too much of a coward to _take responsibility_ so how could he possibly have room to complain about being tossed aside and hastily replaced?

 

He asked, “What is love? And is it worth the journey?” His question fell on deaf ears.

 

The current in the small, enclosed space shifted and, for a split second, Xiaojun believed it was Yukhei stirring to life but the movement was coming from beside him.

 

He didn’t even have time to turn around before scaly arms were wrapped around his neck in greeting. “Xiaojun. There you are,” Renjun mumbled softly into his ear. With surprising strength, he hoisted Xiaojun up off of the sand.

 

Xiaojun’s muscles stiffened. Renjun was the last fin he wanted to see right now. “I just wanted to see how he was doing,” he quickly explained himself even though Renjun hadn’t asked.

 

“To answer your question,” said Renjun smoothly, “love is… apologizing when you don’t want to. Love is forgiving faults and accepting flaws. To love is to spend your life together. Be the best version of yourself that you can be for each other. How strong can love be if you aren’t willing to work through problems?”

 

It terrified Xiaojun to know that Renjun had been listening in. He wondered how much the younger merman had heard. “I don’t want to be in love,” Xiaojun spoke with everything that he had. He attempted to shrug Renjun’s hands off of him. Failed. “Not anymore.” Once had been terrible enough and Renjun was the last person he wanted to talk about _fighting for love_ with.

 

Renjun tightened his grip on Xiaojun’s shoulders, propped his chin up on the crook of Xiaojun’s neck and brought his mouth close to Xiaojun’s ear. “Love takes patience and kindness and tolerance and understanding. Love takes time.”

 

Xiaojun ignored him, choosing instead to silently seethe. Renjun was always like this. He was always ignoring other people’s emotions and moods, barreling continuously forward despite the destruction and stress he caused and then having the nerve to call it _honesty_.

 

Xiaojun looked back up at Yukhei and suddenly found the broken-spirited man in front of him too unbearable to look at.

 

That’s what falling in love with a human meant, Xiaojun understood. He swallowed hard.

 

“That’s not love,” Renjun said, as if reading Xiaojun’s mind. He unlatched his arms from around his friend’s neck and drifted towards Yukhei’s statue-still fins. “All of this,” he waved a hand, “is an abomination. We aren’t meant to be with them so I don’t know why so many of us become fascinated with them. Aren’t humans useless? The things can’t even breathe underwater. They can’t even be pets!” He shook his head, sending his long, coppery hair every which way in the current. “What good is falling in love with a human going to do for you?” He spun around and hooked his eyes in Xiaojun’s direction as if he knew everything already. As if he had always known. “Why fall in love with them? You can’t live in the same place and it’s not like you can carry their eggs.” Something about that word made Renjun’s black eyes go wide as he remembered something important. He floated back towards Xiaojun and once again wrapped his arms around his friend’s neck in a hug. Except now the gesture felt more menacing than friendly. “By the way,” Renjun sang out, “You may be surprised to hear this, but I know the eggs Sicheng’s carrying aren’t mine.” He gently dragged a clawed finger around the base of Xiaojun’s neck and it wasn’t until he’d traced a looping pattern from collarbone to collarbone that Xiaojun realized that Renjun was quietly indicating the shape of Xiaojun’s missing necklace. The one he’d worn every day for years until... recently. Renjun continued, “But I’ll raise those hatchlings like they’re my own… because that’s what love is. Isn’t that right? Compromise. A sharing of burdens. _Forgiveness_.” He lowered his tone to something deep and horrific and the sound sent shivers along Xiaojun’s fins. “Love is being honest with each other. Love is working with your partner to fix mistakes so you can move on from them. Even if that mistake is your soon-to-be husband tangling tails with your best friend.”

 

Xiaojun shuddered. Only partially out of shame.

 

Renjun pulled back and smiled wickedly in his face. “Have a good evening, Xiaojun.” He turned tail and swam out of the room, leaving Xiaojun to stare forlornly at Yukhei’s blank, unsympathetic face.

 

〜

 

Fearing he was being watched, Xiaojun stayed at his home for an entire week before venturing outside of the reef to swim to shore. This was the last time, he told himself as he cut through the water faster than he’d ever swam before. This was the last time he was going to do this.

 

The tide surged around his sensitive fins and he knew a storm was brewing long before he broke the surface and saw the dark clouds gathering on the horizon.

 

This was the last time.

 

He would see Hendery this one last time. To get his necklace back, he convinced himself. And to say goodbye. That was it.

 

With the wind whipping the waves up something fierce, it was difficult for Xiaojun to maintain trajectory but he arrived at the human’s settlement with a bit of time to spare before the storm hit.

 

Even with the worsening weather overhead, Hendery still sat calmly and patiently at the end of the pier as if he’d been sitting there since the last time they met. His face lit up with unadulterated happiness when he caught sight of Xiaojun’s turquoise scales bobbing in the water towards him. “Look at you, look at you,” he cooed. “You know how to keep a man waiting for what he wants.” The wind whipped at his dark hair and at his light clothes and he raised a hand to his scalp to keep his damp hair from slapping at his face. Hendery seemed unafraid of the storm closing in on them. He only had Xiaojun in his sights and on his mind. Despite the choppy waves churning and splashing over the sides of the pier, he jumped down into the dark water.

 

Xiaojun swam forward in a panic when the man didn’t surface immediately. Then Hendery leaped from the depths and pulled him tightly into his pinkish, soft arms, laughing the whole while.

 

The merman was startled by their sudden closeness but then relaxed into the human’s odd warmth.

 

Hendery drew back a tiny bit, took one look at Xiaojun and said, “What’s with that look in your eyes, huh?”

 

“I have to go,” Xiaojun admitted simply. It was the first full sentence he had spoken to Hendery and it was probably going to be his last. All of it was for the best.

 

Hendery felt completely differently about it. “The one thing you say to me and it’s _that_?”

 

Even this was too much. Even this brief moment had been too long. Xiaojun started to pull himself away from Hendery’s arms, but-

 

“Wait.” Hendery unhooked one arm from around Xiaojun’s neck and fumbled around in the soaking wet pocket of his pants. “Don’t you want this back?” He barely managed to pull the necklace free without dropping it into the waves. Slowly, gingerly, he put it over Xiaojun’s damp hair and fiddled with it until it sat nice and neat around the merman’s throat. “My neighbors thought me mad for keeping such a rusted, corroded, calcified thing… But- Do you really have to go?”

 

“Forever,” Xiaojun told the man. Because meeting him again could mean one or both of them dying. “I can’t come back. I’m not allowed.” His heart lurched with sadness as he spoke but he knew it must be said.

 

“Take me with you,” Hendery blurted out.

 

“We can’t be together.”

 

Hendery looked straight into Xiaojun’s black, bottomless eyes. “Take me with you. Please?”

 

That was impossible. Even if Hendery could hold his breath long enough to swim down to the reefs, the water pressure down there would crush his lungs. “You won’t survive.”

 

“I don’t care,” Hendery sputtered out. He stroked the side of Xiaojun’s face longingly. “I can’t stay here.” He lowered his voice to something vulnerable and weak, just above a whisper. “I don’t belong here. I don’t belong here.”

 

Such words bound them together. Xiaojun knew that very feeling. He had no place among the merfolk. He was no great warrior. No spectacular artisan. Not even a particularly memorable performer. He had no qualities that made him suitable for a mate. He’d even tangled tails with royalty and had been too cowardly to get a marriage out of it. If such a secret ever got out, there was no telling how quickly and completely he would be shunned and hated. But… still… “There’s no place for you there and... there’s no place for me here.”

 

What could the two of them do? Their relationship was doomed from the very beginning.

 

It began to rain. Droplets of water fell from the sky and tumbled into the ocean, making Xiaojun’s sensitive fins vibrate uncomfortably beneath the constant, chaotic motion. Hendery started to shiver from the cold and Xiaojun felt like his own heart would rattle out of his chest from the vibrations. He had to get away. The longer he stayed here, the more likely it was he would find a way to convince himself that the two of them stood a chance together. Xiaojun attempted to pull away from Hendery yet again but the man flung both of his arms around Xiaojun’s neck and pressed his face into Xiaojun’s chest. Saltwater that wasn’t rain danced in his eyes and trickled down his warm cheeks. “I love you.”

 

The words dragged across Xiaojun’s flesh and stung like jellyfish tentacles. He flinched and pushed Hendery away. He grunted out, “I shouldn’t have come.”

 

Hendery’s expression, always so soft yet welcoming, split open in a way that made it feel like he was exposing the very depths of his soul. A sob tore itself from his throat and it wasn’t until Xiaojun heard the noise that he considered how harsh his words sounded.

 

Xiaojun tried again. “I shouldn’t have come but I couldn’t stay away… I had to see you one last time.” He had to rise above his past and do this better than Sicheng had done. Xiaojun knew what it felt like to be left behind without a word. He knew what it felt like to look at someone who belonged to a completely different world and know that it was impossible to have them now. He knew how it felt to be tossed aside like flotsam. And if he was going to do that to someone else, he would at least be brave enough to say farewell.

 

Thunder rumbled. Lightning lit up the sky. Close. Very close. It was dangerous for Hendery to be in the water now. Xiaojun had to let him go. They _had_ to part ways. Or...

 

“I have to go,” Xiaojun stated, attempting to lift Hendery back up towards the pier.

 

Hendery fought against his hold, pushing forward until he could press his cool, smooth lips to Xiaojun’s. The man didn’t even flinch as his tongue flicked over the rows of Xiaojun’s sharp teeth.

 

The sensation was… pleasant and the kiss made Xiaojun’s chest bubble and boil like the water above the volcanic vents along the seafloor. This was nice. Hendery was so _different_ yet the parts of them that mattered were still the same. It was Xiaojun who deepened the kiss, pressing a hand to Hendery’s jaw, pressing his tongue into Hendery’s mouth. Hendery sighed against his lips and every fiber of Xiaojun’s being fizzled and foamed which was why he did not notice the intruder swimming up behind them at great speed.

 

“I knew it!” The voice was so loud and so sudden, even over the approaching storm, that the star-crossed lovers jolted away from each other’s arms and spun in the direction of the sound.

 

Even with the black clouds blocking the light of the sky, Xiaojun recognized Renjun’s frightening silhouette. Renjun only made such a face when he was one moment away from closing in on a kill.

 

“Renjun,” Xiaojun exhaled, attempting to douse the younger merman’s anger, “it’s not what it--”

 

“It’s not what it looks like?” Renjun cut him off, fuming. “I caught you in the act!”

 

Hendery swam forward. “I didn’t mean to get him in trouble-”

 

“Don’t you dare speak to me, landwalker!” Renjun raised one of his hands above the surface of the water. In his grip was his favorite shark-bone spear. Lightning flickered in the sky and the blue-white light illuminated the spear’s sharpened head. Renjun addressed Xiaojun, “He can’t know about us. It’s the way of nature. Our law! I should kill him.” He surged forward, brandishing his weapon.

 

“Wait,” Xiaojun put himself into Renjun’s way just in time to avoid watching Renjun skewer Hendery from sternum to spine.

 

“Wait for what?” Renjun wrestled himself out of Xiaojun’s hold and pointed his weapon at the merman instead. “What’s stopping him from following you to the reef in a boat? What’s keeping him from stringing you up like that human did with Yukhei?”

 

“He’s different,” Xiaojun moaned pitifully.

 

“That’s what they all say!” Renjun hollered. He threw his head back and screamed in agony. “Don’t you remember how many friends I’ve lost to humans?” He threw an arm over his eyes as if just the thought tormented him. “Yangyang… Chenle… Now you.” He regained his composure and a new level of anger had entirely consumed his face. “Why do all of you keep being this stupid? What can you possibly see in them?”  

 

Hendery swam forward, putting himself in the dangerous position between Xiaojun and Renjun. “If we can talk, surely we’ll find a way to--”

 

“Shut up!” Renjun narrowed his eyes at the small human and spoke in a growl. “How many more of you know about us? We’ve slaughtered whole villages to keep ourselves secret, you know.” His eyes flashed with a sadistic idea. “This storm will be the perfect cover. I’ll bring the warriors. We’ll gut them all.” He turned his gaze towards the shore.

 

“I’m the only one who knows,” Hendery yelled over the crashing of the waves. “Don’t hurt anyone else. They have nothing to do with any of this. Xiaojun only showed himself to me and even then it was by-- I saved his life!”

 

“And now you think he owes you?” Renjun advanced on Hendery like a shark smelling blood in the water but Xiaojun forced himself between them.

 

“Renjun, stop!”

 

Renjun faced Xiaojun and his expression grew angrier still. “You’re like a brother to me, Xiaojun. We’ve protected each other since we were children and I hate that I have to find out like this that you’re everything to me but I’m _nothing_ to you.”

 

What? “Renjun, that’s not--”

 

“That’s not true,” Renjun finished for him, mocking his tone. His words like a nasty undercurrent sucking everything down, he snapped, “First, you tangle tails with my fiance behind my fin. More than once, he tells me. Now you’re going against everything I told you, everything we stand for... Look at you! Out here being silly with this-- with this _creature_!” He attempted to lunge at Hendery again but Xiaojun used all of his strength to keep the sharpened spear of bone out of Hendery’s chest.

 

“I love him,” Xiaojun cried out. Yet the second it was out of his mouth, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

 

“You don’t,” Renjun corrected him. “You shouldn’t. You can’t.”

 

Words were getting them nowhere. They’d argue back and forth until the storm swept them all out to sea. Xiaojun spun away from Renjun, scooped Hendery up into both of his arms and started to swim away, but--

 

“You can’t run from me!” Renjun’s shout split the sky like thunder and made Xiaojun go still. “I’m the best hunter in the reef for a reason, Xiaojun.” He clutched his bone spear with both hands. “Please don’t make me do this. Please don’t make me make you hate me.”

 

“It’s too late for that.” The words were out of Xiaojun’s mouth before he even realized he felt that way.

 

“All of this for a human?” Renjun’s mouth hung open in disbelief.

 

“Sicheng,” Xiaojun huffed.

 

“Please,” whined Renjun. “How can you be mad about that? He’s tangled tails with both of us and still chose me.”

 

He’d had enough of this. Xiaojun started to swim away again.

 

Renjun’s words were flat and honest. “I will kill you both.”

 

Finding himself at his wit’s end, Xiaojun came to a halt, gripping Hendery’s waist tightly as the waves rolled in frothy peaks around them. Even in so brief a time, the current had taken them far from the pier. It wasn’t all _too far_ of a distance and if Xiaojun could catch a wave just right…

 

“Xiaojun… I can forgive you for everything else you’ve done to me but I can’t forgive you for this.”

 

Xiaojun sucked in salty water through his gills in an attempt to calm himself but with the ocean thrashing around him as the rain pelted down harder, it was difficult to keep his thoughts still. And the way Hendery was looking at him, equal parts fear and hope, compelled Xiaojun to take desperate action. Knowing he was putting everything at risk, he tightened his hold on Hendery and kicked with all of his might in a do-or-die bid to get Hendery safe and sound back to shore where he belonged.

 

“You’ve made a grave mistake.” Renjun had screamed it underwater and the sonar hit the base of Xiaojun’s neck like whale song.

 

It was all the warning he got.

 

There was a rapid change in water pressure and then, suddenly, Renjun was _in front_ of them, leaping from the tossing waves with his bone spear ready to strike.

 

Xiaojun screamed and spun out of the way with barely a fin’s length separating Renjun’s spear from his shoulder.

 

Renjun dove underwater again but Xiaojun could still hear his manic, pealing laughter. At the same moment lightning burned color across the sky, Renjun rose from the waves to strike again.

 

This time, Xiaojun wasn’t fast enough and he felt the spear graze his arm. The hardened coral that grew from his shoulder and back was the only thing that kept him from being thoroughly pierced.

 

Hendery coughed and spit foul saltwater from his mouth. When he looked at Xiaojun, his eyes were wide with fear. And possibly regret. “He really is going to kill us.”

 

“I won’t let him hurt you,” Xiaojun promised. With all of his might, he threw himself forward, riding a wave towards shore.

 

Thunder boomed. Loud. Deafening. Teeth-grating. Bubbles burst forth from beneath the waves, indicating movement. Renjun was on their right side. No. He was on their left. No. No! Now he was in front of them, right at the bottom of the breaking wave!

 

Renjun took aim and then hurled his spear like a fisherman’s harpoon.

 

The movement of the wave beneath Xiaojun made it impossible to change his direction, to shift out of the way. Self-preservation kicked in and he flinched and drew backwards. If he had moved any slower, the spear would have gone through his head! The wave broke, sending water crashing down across his shoulders and bringing him dangerously close to Renjun.

 

Xiaojun screamed with the belated realization of the attack on his life, then the noise dissolved into utter anguish as Xiaojun caught sight of the shaft of the spear protruding from Hendery’s chest. “Renjun,” he yelled. “How could you? If you were my friend, you wouldn’t have done this!”

 

“I did it because I am your friend.” Renjun approached them and, with a heave and a nasty, wet sound, he pulled his spear free of Hendery’s frame.

 

Hendery let out a pained wheeze as red spilled from his chest and clouded the water around them.

 

Xiaojun felt his throat tighten and seize. “No. Hendery. No.” He couldn’t even scream it. His voice left his mouth in quiet bubbles. “No, no, no.” He ran his hands across Hendery’s cheeks. “No… This wasn’t supposed to happen.” He had been trying to take Hendery to safety not get him killed!

 

Hendery’s eyes took several seconds to find Xiaojun’s. “My sweet angel,” he wheezed. Even in a moment like this, he managed to smile. “I’m just happy to have met you… to have found a reason… to keep waiting for tomorrow.”

 

“Please don’t leave me,” Xiaojun begged, but he knew it was an impossible request. Hendery’s wound was far too severe. Xiaojun could feel the man’s body trembling from the shock and his eyes were already beginning to drift closed.

 

Renjun seemed to take sick joy in this, “Foolish boy. You and Yukhei both deserve this pain.” Without another word, he dove beneath the waves but Xiaojun didn’t have to feel his movements in the water below to know that the warrior was through with them. The damage had been done.

 

This was no time to grieve or mourn. The tide was now dragging Xiaojun dangerously close to a cluster of sharp rocks. He’d be smashed to bits against them by the waves if he didn’t swim away. Yet even in the face of such peril, Xiaojun couldn’t move. What was he supposed to do now? He clutched Hendery’s body in his arms and he wanted to do nothing but weep... but a new strength opened up inside of him and he fought back his emotions. Xiaojun pushed hard against the current to swim away from the rocks. He couldn’t take the human back to the mermaid reef. Even to hang him among the sunken grave markers of mermaids past. He certainly couldn’t risk swimming close to shore in this weather. He’d be beached for sure. Already, he was exhausted. Just what little bit of traversing the storm-high waves he’d accomplished had tired him out. So he took the one option left to him: he released his hold on the human and left Hendery to the tide, pleading with the ocean that she take the man back towards his kind.

 

〜

 

Xiaojun mourned for hours. Perhaps days. Time no longer mattered to him.

 

He hadn’t been ordered to do so but he isolated himself in the same stacked stone alcove where Yukhei lived. No, not lived. _Existed_.

 

If that.

 

In that dark, quiet stillness, they both lay starving and unmoving, catching fits of restless, dreamless sleep.

 

Bubbles of tears poured from the corners of Xiaojun’s eyes and he soon discovered that the only thing he could do that felt right was to sing. The songs were dry and wordless at first, devoid of any true meaning. Just note followed by note. Then, as grief filled his every crevice and fought to be set free, the songs developed a life of their own. A pathetic, mournful life but a life all the same. With each lyric he coaxed from the back of his throat and sent echoing around the small alcove, he felt more and more of his emotions take over. For hours he sang, one dirge melting into another, until his voice was hoarse and weak. And then he pushed past the ache in his heart and in his throat and sang even more until his voice was gone completely and he couldn’t even manage a toad’s croak. All of his energy gone, he stretched himself out across the sand, legitimately waiting to dissolve into seafoam. Waiting to die. Then...

 

“I haven’t heard you sing in so long.”

 

Xiaojun was so beside himself with emotion that he almost didn’t hear the quiet, timid voice. Yukhei? He looked up.

 

“You loved and lost just like I did,” Yukhei answered from across the alcove. Xiaojun couldn’t see him in the dark but he could sense the older merman’s movements. “You don’t have to tell me. I can hear it. I can feel it.”

 

Hurriedly, Xiaojun sat up and scraped his fingers over the algae that grew across the stone until he had stirred them up enough to create light he could see by.

 

“How great is she,” Yukhei asked. He still looked like he was broken on the inside and the outside, but at least he appeared lucid and aware.

 

“He,” Xiaojun corrected. He cleared his throat and strained his voice even more to get the words out. “He was fearless yet gentle.” He pulled himself across the sandy floor to reach where Yukhei was sitting. “And he looked at me… he looked at _me_ \--” He pointed a clawed finger at himself as if there was anyone else he could have been referring to. “He looked at me and thought that I was beautiful. He saw my teeth and claws and scales and… he was not afraid.”

 

Yukhei noticed his use of the past tense. “What happened to him?”

 

“Renjun,” Xiaojun supplied. That was all the answer he had a voice left for.

 

They sat in a heavy, knowing silence for an uncountable amount of time. To the point where the algae expended their remaining light and cast them back again into blackness. Then Yukhei asked, “Do you really love him?”

 

Xiaojun wasn’t sure - even now - but his heart wasn’t in this much pain without reason. He nodded. Knowing Yukhei couldn’t see him, he nodded.

 

Even in the darkness, Xiaojun felt Yukhei reach out a hand. Xiaojun even shifted forward a bit to give Yukhei an easier time finding his arm and then his shoulder and then his neck before, at last, gently cupping his webbed hands along Xiaojun's cheek. “Then you should go to the bottom of the sea.”

 

Yukhei didn’t have to explain himself further. Xiaojun knew exactly what he meant.

 

〜

 

The location was a pitch-black underwater canyon. It was nowhere close to the ocean’s lowest point but it was called such because of how dark and cold and quiet it was.

 

Xiaojun took slow, easy breaths through his gills but the water pressure was still great enough to make breathing difficult. He almost couldn’t do it. Both breathe and go through with this madness. He was about to seek help from the most dangerous being on the ocean floor. Someone far more cruel and ruthless and unforgiving than even Renjun! The smart thing to do would be to turn tail and run.

 

But what is love if it wasn’t worth fighting for?

 

So Xiaojun proceeded into the unfathomable depths.

 

He could not see. There was no luminescent algae down here to light his path.

 

It was so quiet he may as well have been deaf. Even his pulse racing in his ears sounded distant.

 

He couldn’t use those particular senses, but he could _feel_. His sensitive fins tingled when even the slightest current moved past them and he used these faint sensations to guide his way through the canyon’s numerous tunnels, knowing that the one he was after resided at the very center of the labyrinth.

 

On and on he went. For hours. As time elapsed, it became harder for him to tell the difference between his wild imagination and what was real. Could he hear someone singing or was that his own pulse hammering away in his veins? Were there twisted, unknowable shapes brushing past him in the darkness or was it simply the canyon wall?

 

Further he went. His grief and loneliness curled the edges of his mind over themselves until he was certain he could see a pale, purple light in front of him.

 

No. He _could_ see light. And it brightened before his eyes, luring him to the center of the canyon where the creature he had come all this way to see resided.

 

The sea witch. Chittaphon. Exiled to the bottom of the sea by the merfolk decades ago.

 

They seemed to know Xiaojun had come to see them. Had probably been aware of his intrusion since he first swam up to the mouth of the canyon what felt like an eternity ago.

 

“We’ve heard about you,” Chittaphon called out. Unlike the bottomless black of merfolk eyes, theirs were a blind white. Their skin was ghastly pale - nearly translucent - from eons spent in total darkness. From their slim waist erupted eight thick tentacles that grasped at the canyon rocks in a fascinating dance of minute movements. “We know why you’ve come.”

 

“How,” Xiaojun choked out. He had only just made the decision to come down here today. If it was still ‘today.’ If he hadn’t slipped into some other world without realizing.

 

Chittaphon smiled knowingly, their lips stretching wide and revealing flat, white teeth. “All secrets float down to us.” The sea witch stretched out a hand as if able to physically catch the world’s secrets between their narrow fingers.

 

Xiaojun gulped. “Do you really know why I’m here? Are you really going to help me?”

 

Chittaphon’s tentacles all wriggled together, gracefully dragging them over the rock and sand that separated the two sea creatures. “We get asked to grant all sorts of wishes.” Chittaphon's voice left their mouth in a flurry of bubbles. “We can’t count the number of merfolk who ask for the impossible and… receive the impossible.” They drew close to Xiaojun. Face to face. All-white eyes saw deep into all-black eyes and _understood_. “As long as creatures die, there will always be creatures who seek to cheat death.”

 

It made Xiaojun turn his head and cringe. Were his desires really so plain and silly? Was he truly so easy to read?

 

Chittaphon raised a hand and dragged a fingernail up Xiaojun’s throat and along his jaw. “What good is a second chance at life? A man is only true to his own heart if he knows death waits for him.”

 

“I tried to save him.” Xiaojun smacked Chittaphon’s hand away. “I would have put my life on the line for him!” He cupped a hand around the coral growths across his shoulder. He could still feel the jagged edges Renjun’s spear had cut into them. “But my strength wasn’t enough. I wasn’t capable. I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t feel for him deeply enough.” He could list the ways. They would go on and on.

 

The sea witch reared back, giving Xiaojun much needed distance. “Why are you acting like we are refusing you?” They laughed humorlessly.

 

Xiaojun’s mood brightened. He perked up.

 

“We know magic older than the merfolk. Magic more powerful than that pitiful coral kingdom.” Chittaphon curled a hand into an angry fist. “They threw us out because of our power yet they slink to us in secret to beg for our strength.” Chittaphon seemed to bloat with anger and it wasn’t until then that Xiaojun realized how badly he had interpreted the situation.

 

Chittaphon was not as small as Xiaojun first assumed. Their tentacles, when curled beneath them, disguised their size significantly. Now those tentacles stretched and reached, curling around nearby rocks and making Chittaphon appear to fill the entirety of the dark canyon. Their shape swallowed almost every ounce of light left in the space. “We will give your love its second chance,” the witch declared. “Now go. Leave us.”

 

Xiaojun searched the shadows and crevices of the witch’s lair but spotted no sign of Hendery. “Where is he?”

 

“Do not question us!” Chittaphon pointed Xiaojun in the direction he had swam in from. “Turn around. Leave. Do not look back.”

 

“But-”

 

“The spell has been cast, boy,” Chittaphon bellowed. “But know this. All spells have a catch. Leave and your love will follow you. Make it to the surface and he is yours. But doubt us, or, rather, doubt yourself and look behind you, and we will snatch him back so fast that you won’t see us take him.”

 

An easy enough task. “I’ll go,” he said fearlessly. “I’ll get him back.”

 

Such a response made Chittaphon laugh. As if this were all a game. As if they cared not who won or lost. “Prove it.”

 

Xiaojun flipped tail and swam for the exit. As he left Chittaphon’s lair, the witch’s purple glow seemed to crawl across the canyon walls and tunnels as if leading the way. Xiaojun followed the light, racing from one end of a tunnel to the other, charging through open caves and wide sections of canyon. As he moved, he tried to sense with his fins if someone were behind him. He tried to listen for the sound of human legs kicking in the water. He tried to catch sight of a second shadow on the craggy walls beside him.

 

Was Hendery _really_ behind him?

 

He nearly turned around to look but stopped himself. If Hendery was really there, then Chittaphon would take him away if Xiaojun looked. With fresh determination, he faced forward and kept swimming.

 

Xiaojun continued to follow the purple glow of the canyon walls. He turned down the tunnels that lit up before him and avoided the ones that stayed dark.

 

Every now and then, he slowed down dramatically in some foolish hope that he would feel Hendery collide with his back. As many times as he did it and he felt no such impact.

 

Then he took to reaching behind him. Grasping and swinging as if trying to find Hendery’s hand but the water remained cold on his skin.

 

When he reached the exit of the bottom of the sea, he suddenly felt foolish.

 

What if he was just as alone now as he was when he went in? What if all of this was some cruel and heartless trick? What if Renjun had somehow enlisted the aid of the formidable sea witch to try and teach him a cruel lesson?

 

Achingly slowly, these doubts began to weigh on Xiaojun’s mind. Yet he swam on, aiming up and up towards the ocean’s surface. As he swam, he felt the great pressure of the depths ease up around him. His ears stretched and popped to adjust. The ocean grew steadily brighter as Xiaojun swam closer to the surface. He passed dolphins on his journey. They clicked and chirped to him and he clumsily returned their greetings. He spotted whales in the distance and overheard their low, baritone singing. The ocean came alive around him with movement and sound and dappled sunlight but the inside of Xiaojun’s heart remained still and dark.

 

Was Hendery really behind him? When Xiaojun broke the surface, would his love really be at his side?

 

 _Was_ this love?

 

Xiaojun felt foolish again. He had quite literally swam the length of the ocean for a man he hardly knew. How could that be love?

 

The surface was so close. He could see the waves crest and break above him.

 

They were almost there.

 

No. _He_ was almost there. Alone. Certainly, Chittaphon couldn’t actually bring men back to life. The sea witch had played this awful, cruel joke on an already heartbroken man. There weren’t too many pieces remaining that could be shattered.

 

Xiaojun was close enough to the surface now that he could feel the heat of the sun on his face. He raised a hand towards the light, towards the surface. In a moment, he would break free. He was right there - _right there_ \- but the dark thunderclouds of his doubt ate away at him. He had to look. He had to see! He had to _know_.

 

He looked over his shoulder.

 

Hendery was right behind him, swimming hard to keep up with him. So close he could have grabbed hold of Xiaojun’s fins.

 

They made eye contact.

 

It was as if Hendery knew the terrible consequences of being seen. His face contorted with horror. He raised a hand to his throat as if he were choking. Drowning.

 

Xiaojun broke through the surface of the ocean and swallowed a mouthful of air. But he was alone.

 

This time for good.

**Author's Note:**

> @[Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


End file.
